Climate change and global health

Abstract

There is increasing understanding that climate change will have profound, mostly harmful effects on human health. In this authoritative book, international experts examine long-recognized areas of health concern for populations vulnerable to climate change, describing effects that are both direct, such as heat waves, and indirect, such as via vector-borne diseases. Set in a broad international, economic, political and environmental context, this unique book expands these issues by reviving and championing a third ('tertiary') category of longer term impacts on global health: famine, population dislocation, conflict and collapse. This edition has an expanded foundation, with new chapters discussing nuclear war, population and limits to growth, among others. This lively yet scholarly resource explores all these issues, finishing with a practical discussion of avenues to reform. As Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, states in the foreword: 'Climate change interacts with many undesirable aspects of human behaviour, including inequality, racism and other manifestations of injustice. Climate change policies, as practised by most countries in the global North, not only interact with these long-standing forms of injustice, but exemplify a new form, of startling magnitude.' The book is dedicated to Tony McMichael, Will Steffen and Maurice King. This book will be invaluable for students, post-graduates, researchers and policy-makers in public health, climate change and medicine.